Sweet Spot Progression

I built out to 4x20 (2 minute rest) in about a month. It didn’t feel very hard but SS work never really feels hard to me. My biggest limiter is sitting on a trainer for 2+ hours. :slight_smile:

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Bare minimum sweetspot interval I’d contemplate is 15 minutes, and then that’d be the first one in a while or if I just wanted to touch on my muscular endurance when I’m otherwise focused on something else.

If I’m doing a sweetspot block then I’m probably going to look at 25 minutes as the absolute minimum interval length for 90% of FTP.

It’s muscular endurance work, so the aim is to chug on for extended, continuous efforts, so 2 × 40 over 2 hours is better than 4 × 20 … and 1 × 80 is even better.

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The SS90 workouts were created to provide a standardized set of workouts (same warmup, same rest intervals, same cooldown) that would allow us to extend sweet-spot intervals further and more easily than what was easily available in the TR library, and without having to hunt for the right workout. They’re not “better” or “worse” than TR’s workouts.

I did not create 5x workouts because my understanding is that sweet-spot efforts are more beneficial when (a) you spend more time in zone, and (b) each interval is longer. The 4x workouts are intended to be starting points but you should move to 3x or 2x as you get stronger and extend time in zone.

I’m not a coach, but I wouldn’t recommend 5x10. If 4x10 is all you can do, then do 4x12 next time. From there you can move to 4x14 or 3x16. But over time, definitely move to the 3x or 2x workouts so you get longer intervals.

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Not sure if I will ever get there but since I’m talking to the guy that makes the workouts (thanks for that!) could you make a workout (or a couple) to fall between SS90/60 2x30 and SS90/70 2x35? Like an SS90/64?

Yeah I guess in terms of the 5x stuff, I was thinking in terms of the XCO races in my area, they are generally 5 laps with maybe 2 mins or so of descending each lap.

In the past I knew that AI FTP would always give me a FTP bump if I had done Half dome (5x8min @85%) but it makes sense that you should be able to do a SS90/60 workout and have it not be a capacitive effort before you really need an FTP boost.

I think AI FTP has gotten a bit better now though, my last 2 detections have suggested a decrease by 1 or 2 watts rather than an increase, despite have Endurance, Sweet Spot and VO2 Max levels >4.

Does it ever make sense to start doing FTP intervals in a certain part of the season rather than SS intervals? Like switching over to something like Sheep Mountain 4x8 @100%? Log In to TrainerRoad

If you’re going to want smaller jumps (say, 10% instead of 15% in this case), you might want to skip 2x35 entirely and go 2x30, 2x33, 2x36, 2x40.

I haven’t created any workouts in about three years, but I’d encourage you to install TR’s workout creator and do it yourself. You just need to install the tool, load one of the existing workouts, make a copy of it!, then edit your copy. Change the interval lengths, change the description text, give it a new name, upload it to the team, and you’re done.

When you learn to create workouts, you gain a ton of flexibility for your own training. And those 5 minutes you spent creating a new workout for the team contributes a collective resource for everyone else too. While I built out the majority of the workouts in the More Sweet Spot team originally, a bunch of people have contributed and grown the workout library since.

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How do I upload it to the team?

On the team page, go to Administration and Manage Workouts from the sidebar on the left. You might have to be an admin to do that, not sure. If you need to become an admin, let me know and I’ll make you one.

Within the “manage workouts” page, you’ll see a red “Add Workouts” button on the top right.

@ZackeryWeimer If users new to TR don’t have access to the Teams functionality, as I understand is the case from some post here a while ago, does that mean that Teams is on a path to being deprecated “at some point”?

If so…

Bearing in mind that a bunch of us are regularly using some of the custom workouts contained within some of the Teams (well one of the teams anyway - please see above ;), would it be possible for you guys to ensure that these very useful and popular workouts get migrated over to the main TR workout library prior to any future Teams deprecation/removal?

Thanks!

PS I think I almost but not quite asked this question of TR before, but maybe not so directly or clearly; apologies if I’ve missed an earlier reply.

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I second this. I’d like to know what the future holds for the workouts contained in teams. I use these custom workouts as a staple and if they were removed or somehow deprecated, I would probably have to move on to a different platform quite honestly.

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The More Sweetspot stuff is an absolute staple of my training - it’s 50/50 whether their loss would impact me more than the loss of all the other eleventy billion w/o’s in the main library put together.

I “could” just create every one of them as my own custom workout - with everyone else who wished to keep using them doing the same, which is not really the most elegant solution and in any case would rule out their discovery by other (new) users to whom they could be useful - but since I don’t have Windows or Mac I can’t actually do that anyway… :person_facepalming:

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Added these bangers

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I made it but need admin privileges to add it to the library

Any admin can make you an admin (just so people don’t specifically always look for me… I may not always be around.)

@Dexvd, you’re now an admin. Make us all proud. :+1:t2:

Added this one, not sure if I will ever get it myself but seemed like there was some room to add some workouts in between the 7.0 and 8.0 PL level

If I sort by newest I see it as the 3rd one down

On the TR website, filtering Workouts by Teams->More Sweet Spot!
OR selecting Teams->More Sweet Spot!->Workout Library
=> both mechanisms show 48 workouts.

In the TR Android app, selecting Workouts->Teams->More Sweet Spot!
=> shows 45 workouts (with the new “SS90/64 2x32” being one of those MIA).

Not investigated any further as bedtime :sleeping:

I wonder if the TR app needs to update to update the workout library, it seems likely the 3 newest workouts in the Teams library aren’t in the app.

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If you use the Desktop application the 3 missing workouts do show up so this is a problem limited to the mobile apps. As a work around, you can schedule the workout using the Website, and it will then show up on your calendar on mobile.

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FWIW - I’m now seeing the new workouts on the app on iPhone. Looks like it takes a little while to cascade to the app vs PC

Need some advice here.

I’m starting out with SS90/4x8min how should i progress from here? I was able to get thru the 4x8min but felt like i was barely able to make it. Do I repeat that same one for my next workout or progress to a 3x9min?